Northern uses Grand Central ‘180’ to ease capacity issues

Northern is hiring a five-car 125mph Class 180 from Grand Central each morning, to meet capacity requirements caused by the decision to remove Class 170/3s from TransPennine Express.

Since the start of the Northern and TPE franchises on April 1, the former has hired a ‘185’ from the latter to operate services that transferred from TPE to Northern in the North West.

However, the decision to move ‘170s’ from TPE to Chiltern Railways, made last year, has created a shortfall in capacity in the North. TPE handed the last ‘170s’ to their owner Porterbrook on July 8, and as a result has taken back the ‘185’. From July 11 Northern has used the GC ‘180’ on the 0743 Bradford Interchange to Leeds.

Northern Business Development Director Barry Graham said on June 30: “The ‘180’ will operate a Northern service, but will be crewed by Grand Central. This will be the case until December 2017. Overall, this means some reduction in capacity in some routes.”

He said that services operated by a three-car ‘185’ to Windermere will be covered by a two-car ‘156’ until September, at which time that increases to a three-car formation using a Class 153.

To try to release additional capacity in the North West, Northern has recast rosters so that the 1716 Liverpool Lime Street to Blackpool is formed of a four-car Class 319. But that will now terminate at Preston, with passengers forced to change. Graham explained that the ‘319’ replaces a two-car DMU, but said that the necessary change was not ideal. There were no paths to run an additional train, he said.

Other areas where there will be reduced capacity include on the Calder Valley and between Wigan Wallgate and Stalybridge.

“It is acknowledged as an industry problem that we are perilously close to running out of options until new trains are built. We are pretty close to the end of the road for capacity,” said Graham.